'I retired and made a killing!'

Killing is our business: No one in power seems to give a damn about the ongoing slaughter in Sudan, least of all officials with the Nevada Public Employee Retirement System, who've invested $58 million with multinational firms that fund the genocide there. Yet more than six months after a call from Gov. Jim Gibbons and powerful state lawmakers for Nevada PERS to divest from these companies -- and more than four weeks after President George W. Bush signed new legislation authorizing states to do so -- PERS officials have done nothing.

And business is good: A prolonged public outcry this summer and fall forced two of so-called "worst offender" companies, Rolls Royce and French power and rail transport giant Alstom, to reverse course and stop funding the murder and displacement of millions of Sudanese families. As a result, PERS has a little more than $1 million invested with two firms whose Sudan-based operations still fund the genocide: French oilfield firm Schlumberger and Swedish oil and gas conglomerate Lundin Petroleum (or, just 0.056 percent of the PERS $23-billion investment portfolio).

Peace sells, but who's buying? For months, PERS Executive Officer Dana Bilyeu has told CityLife she was waiting to see if Congress passed legislation that would give "safe harbor" to state investment vehicles to yank funds from corporations operating in Sudan. Back in December, Congress passed just such a law, the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, and President Bush signed it into law on Dec. 31. Yet Bilyeu and PERS still sit on their hands. Bilyeu says the law does not grant state pension plans the right to divest, adding, "The next step is to review this legislation ... to see what, if any, impact [it] may have on the fiduciary requirements imposed on [PERS'] Board of Trustees."

Jason Whited » jwhited@lvcitylife.com